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Sitting beneath a painting of Turkey’s founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Ekrem İmamoğlu prayed quietly this week as he listened to a blessing wishing him success following his re-election as Istanbul mayor. Just days earlier, İmamoğlu had sent a huge crowd into rapturous celebration as he declared victory against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s candidate in local elections billed as vital for the future of the country’s opposition.
The contrasting scenes underscore İmamoğlu’s ability to morph between charismatic campaigner and softer, more pious man. This has won him support from beyond his Republican People’s party (CHP), which was founded on Atatürk’s staunchly secular ideology. “I really want the Republic of Turkey to exist for centuries in the secular order, in the democratic order, and with this diversity,” İmamoğlu told the FT. His desk displays both the Nutuk, a key Atatürk speech, and the Koran. “I prayed here with my family . . . I prayed for my own success,” he says.
Last Sunday’s victory came despite Erdoğan throwing his own star power and immense resources into winning back Istanbul for his Islamist-leaning ruling party. The 52-year-old İmamoğlu first clinched control of Turkey’s biggest city in 2019 and has now cemented his status as the strongman’s arch-rival and a likely contender for future president.
İmamoğlu’s broad appeal helped him beat Murat Kurum, the candidate for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP), by a 12-percentage point margin. “[İmamoğlu’s] diverse background enables him to connect with people of different backgrounds . . . social classes as well as cultural classes, conservative as well as secular people,” says Murat Somer at Özyeğin University.
His strong showing echoed CHP wins across the country, seen as pivotal after a six-party opposition alliance lost against Erdoğan in last May’s presidential election. But no race was as important as Istanbul. “This was never just the Istanbul election . . . it turned into an election in which the president himself declared himself as an interlocutor,” İmamoğlu says.
Born in 1970 in the conservative Black Sea province of Trabzon, İmamoğlu describes his family as “very large and colourful”. His mother was “very” religiously conservative while his father was part of a nationalist political movement, according to Necati Özkan, his campaign manager and longtime friend.
During his studies at İstanbul University, İmamoğlu developed his social democrat ideology, which melds free-market economics with strong state support. His wife Dilek pulled him deeper into the social democrat fold. This diverse background has been important in helping him reach a broad base, analysts and CHP officials say. “He can talk to everybody, all groups of society,” says Selcuk Sariyar, who previously served as his deputy mayor.
After working in his family’s construction business, İmamoğlu entered politics in 2009. His first major win came in 2014, when he beat the incumbent AKP candidate to become mayor of Istanbul’s Beylikdüzü district. Five years later, he challenged the AKP on a much bigger stage — Istanbul. The sprawling city is home to almost 16mn people, with a $16bn budget. İmamoğlu won, again seizing control from the AKP and dealing a blow to Erdoğan, who was born in Istanbul and rose to national prominence as its mayor in 1994.
Özkan says this win came down to him being “a young person talking a different language, talking about equality, talking about quality of life . . . talking about democracy”. Erdoğan’s AKP insisted on a repeat election, which İmamoğlu won by an even wider margin, establishing his mystique as the only politician to repeatedly beat Turkey’s leader, even if indirectly.
His flagship programmes have included opening 100 day care centres as well as more than a dozen municipal restaurants that serve meals for about $1. Woman with young children are also provided with free transit on the city’s vast public transport network. One leader of a big Istanbul-based business said that while İmamoğlu had proven himself to be a capable leader, he remained a “political bureaucrat [rather] than someone who wants to really drive change”.
Since 2019, Erdoğan has cranked up the pressure. In late 2022, a Turkish court sentenced İmamoğlu to two and a half years in jail and gave him a political ban for allegedly calling Turkey’s high-election board “idiots” after the 2019 rerun. The US said the conviction was “inconsistent with respect to human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law”. İmamoğlu has appealed. Last year, authorities filed a new criminal case, charging him with corruption. His lawyer described it as a “baseless” plot to punish one of Erdoğan’s rivals; hearings are expected in April.
The cases, combined with Erdoğan’s move to deploy ministers to campaign for Kurum in Istanbul, created the impression among voters that “the entire state is against İmamoğlu”, says Özer Sencar at the Metropoll research group. He believes that probably gave him a boost.
İmamoğlu still declines to say whether he will make a national run in 2028, which some believe could pit him against Erdoğan despite the president having reached his term limits. A race between them, or with Erdoğan’s successor, would be a significant test of the Istanbul mayor’s appeal across Turkey’s Anatolian heartland where the AKP party is popular with voters who back the president’s Islamist-rooted politics. “[İmamoğlu] wants to change the fate of the country,” Özkan says.
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